Wee Hours
by It's Just a Show
Summary: Approximately five weeks postTwilight, and Tony's not sleeping.
1. One

**DISCLAIMER: NCIS: Not mine. **

**THANKS to those who inspired and contributed to this fic, as well as to loud, raucous peals of laughter, even if you don't realize that you're included. It was all greatly needed and appreciated, really–even if you didn't exactly _mean_ it.**

**Wee Hours  
(Or, _Nocturnal Remission_**)

**NCIS: Friday, July 1, 2005, 10:37 a.m. EDT**

Anthony DiNozzo sat on the couch in Dr. Mallard's rarely used office. He looked for all the world like a young boy sent to the headmaster's office, the doctor thought, hunched over his knees and looking miserable–except that the grey complexion, sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes made him look anything but young or boyish. The agent had not been sleeping well for several weeks and, of late, was not sleeping at all. Finally Gibbs threatened to order him onto medical leave unless he agreed to cooperate with their resident physician before he became one of Ducky's more typical patients–one a lot greyer and more sunken than Tony looked quite yet.

"You haven't been sleeping, Anthony, or you _won't_ go to sleep?" At DiNozzo's eyes' quick dart upward to his, the doctor knew he'd struck pay dirt. "The dreams, again...you said before, your sleep was often disturbed by dreams..." DiNozzo didn't speak but, after a moment, grudgingly nodded, glancing back up to the doctor for affirmation. "You've been through a lot of stress lately, Anthony," Dr. Mallard urged, hoping to give the man some peace. "It's not at all unusual to have incredibly vivid, disturbing dreams as your mind works to clear itself of the trauma it's suffered..."

"But it's not that..." Tony finally managed, struggling with demons more harrowing than only dreams or lack of sleep. Was this it? Could he finally admit to himself–and to the doctor–that his sanity maybe really _was_ on the brink? How could he admit this to the wise and helpful doctor who would have to report his insanity to Gibbs before the words had faded from the air? "Ducky, I..." he started, stopped, and licked his lips. "they're not..."

"Not what, Anthony?" Dr. Mallard helped.

A gulp. "Dreams. They're not dreams. They're _real_..."

The kindly expression took a sad turn. "You're dreaming about Kate, aren't you?"

"Yes, but..."

"It's not at all unusual to feel as if dreams about a recent loss are real–more real than the alternative, the grimmer, harsher reality of the daytime."

"But it's everyone, Ducky, not just–what happened. There are some with all of us, or some with just a few, but...mostly, it's me. And Gibbs."

"Well, naturally, my boy, the two of you were with her at the time...and we're a team; we've shared a loss..."

"No, no, Duck, it's not that!" Tony was suddenly up and pacing, tension and lack of sleep making his agitation bubble over. "It's what they're doing to me! I've been killed, shot, stabbed, drowned...I've been diagnosed with heart failure, M.S., a severed spinal cord...I've had half my brain removed!"

Ducky frowned, less certain but still game. "Who are _they_, Anthony?"

"I've been a coma nearly as often as I've been made to lose my mind..." he gulped, too wound up to hear anything but his nightmares. "I've been made to be fourteen again, and pushed ahead to be nearly fifty. I've broken down, broken up, broken out, broken in...I've slept with everyone you can imagine– and several you can't! _Why_, Ducky? Why are they doing this to me?"

The sad expression was back. "Tony," the doctor spoke softly, to soothe. "Could it be that your subconscious is trying to punish you, to hurt _you_, because you're still blaming yourself for Kate's de..."

"No, we're _all_ falling victim–Gibbs, Abby...even Kate! We're all in and out of emergency rooms more often than soap opera surgeons! And they're not always _bad_ things; hell, it's almost as creepy–we get married, we have babies, we become happy little couples and I'll be damned if they don't have cute little names for each match up–Kate and I get married we're the 'Tates.' Gibbs and Abby get it on, they're 'Gabby.' Kate hooks up with Gibbs, it's..."

"I get the idea..." The good doctor was positively frowning his concern now.

"Oh, but there's more..." Tony breathed, finally breaking free of long weeks being haunted. "They're _watching_! And not just watching...they're...judging me, judging us..._reviewing_ us, what we've done, like the judges in the old time Olympics, holding up cards after the performance. But not with numbers, oh, no..." His green eyes now glittered with a sort of madness, "but with comments and opinions... like, 'Awesome!' and 'Kewl!' and 'OMG!' ...or...or... 'Tony would never do that,'" he panted. "Who the hell are these people and _why_ do they think they know _what_ I'd do?"

"Tony; please; sit..." Dr. Mallard rose to gently herd DiNozzo back to the couch, concern still tracing his brow. "I had no idea things had become so intense for you. How long has this been happening? Just since we lost Kate?"

Tony hesitated, looking awkwardly guilty, suddenly aware how much he'd confessed, but knowing he'd have exploded if he held it in much longer. "No...for...awhile. Maybe a couple years now...it started picking up, just one or two small moments, but then in the fall 2003, more and more..." He sighed. "It was pretty steady, and but _really_ picked up after Kate was...well, you know..."

Ducky nodded. "I see..." Tony suddenly noticed–or was he imagining–that the doctor looked less worried now–and more thoughtful? "Anthony..." he was asking. "Was there something...recent...that pushed you to this, a final straw, perhaps?"

Tony looked back into the kind eyes and wavered, then looked away, imploring, "yes...but please, Duck, don't make me tell you..."

"It will help to get it out in the open..."

Tony wavered, stared at the wall for long minutes...and let his face drop into his hands. "I was _pregnant," _he shuddered, "I had a _baby_..."

"Boy or girl?" Ducky brightened a little.

"_Ducky!"_ Tony moaned, miserable. "For God's sake, you're a _doctor_! I can't be pregnant..."

"Well, of course not..." Ducky remembered himself, musing a moment...then asked, "Who was the father?"

"I think you know that, Dr. Mallard..."

Both sets of eyes swivelled up to meet the familiar, icy hues as Gibbs stood in the doorway, gazing long at DiNozzo...

"...Tony..." Gibbs stepped in the room, nearing the younger agent, slowly. "You're not ashamed of me, are you? Of us? You know...Tibbs?"

"Boss..." Tony moaned, weakly. "They're just dreams..." He looked over to Ducky, hope still alive. "_Bete noire_, all just bad dreams, right, doc?" His eyes begged the doctor for his help.

"Oh, I'm afraid not, Anthony; you see, 'Tibbs' has a very special place in the hearts of our readers everywhere..." Ducky stood, and gently guided Tony by the elbow to Gibbs' waiting embrace. "And 'slash is the stuff that a young girl's dreams are made of...'" he paraphrased, regally. "Although I bloody well can't for the life of me tell why."

"DiNozzo, think of all the time you've spent trying to impress me these past few years." Gibbs lifted an eyebrow to waggle it at the younger agent. "Maybe you did too good a job."

"No..no, look...I can't..." Tony backed up, eyes wild with the implications, and stammered, "Just... I need a few days off; I need that week, Boss...er, Gibbs, er, no, Boss; I..." He was out the door and still babbling the knowledge just opened to him. "I'll...I'll call..."

The two older men stood silently for the moment, listening to the footfalls in the hall as Tony now ran for the door, for the outside world, desperate to find what was real and what merely fiction. After a moment, the doctor turned to peer up at the senior agent. "Well, now Jethro, what's next? Will he come around?"

Gibbs grinned one of his patented, slow grins as he drawled, "Oh, come on now, Ducky. You have to wait and read the next chapter, same as everyone else."

"Oh, damn it, Jethro, how I hate when you say that!"

"Well," Gibbs shrugged, his grin sliding lopsidedly into a look of amusement. "I could help you pass the time..."

At that, the older man beamed as he slid into the younger man's strong, ex-Marine arm. "Why, Jethro...I thought you'd never ask..." But as he drew closer, Dr. Mallard paused for a moment, a twinkle in his eye. "For tonight, Jethro–shall we go it alone...or shall we call Caitlin to join us again...?"


	2. Two

**DISCLAIMER: NCIS: Not mine...yet. **

**THIS was to have been a one-shot offering, but alas, the Ghosts of FanFic Past had their way with me...**

**SPOILERS? _Twilight_, and the five FFN entries reverently referenced here (can you find them all?) More of this will make sense with each of the five you've read. Thanks to the five intrepid Authors who posted the stories–couldn't have done this without you.**

**Wee Hours  
(Or, _Nocturnal Reminder_**)

**NCIS: **

**Later.**

Tony DiNozzo found himself praying he'd gone insane.

Twenty minutes ago he was praying for just the opposite. He'd been so sure that the dreams haunting him were somehow real, and not just dreams, but he'd never expected _this_ hell. Either someone would come tell him he was a victim of one of those infernal reality shows, and boy would he kill whomever engineered all this, or Rod Serling would pop up in a corner, the room would go all black and white and we'd all learn he was in the Twilight Zone...or Ducky would decide he was insane. Yep, at the moment he decided that being insane was his best choice: they had medications for that...

But in the mean time, he was still an investigator, and investigators craved answers. Stubbornly believing that he wouldn't find answers more disturbing than the ones Ducky tried to give him just now, he ran upstairs toward the bullpen and his desk, hoping to find McGee for some answers–or, in a pinch, his own computer for a bit of reality check.

Even mid-day, the whole room was eerily silent and empty, sun streaming in the windows, but computers and television still up and blinking in cheery quiet. Was it Saturday already? A long holiday weekend, even for them: had he passed out somehow, in Ducky's office, and lost time somewhere? What time was it, anyway? What _day_?

Flopping into his chair he called up the office home page to get his bearings and see what he might find, to give him a start on this thing–

..and noticed at the desk across from him, the picture of casual ease, Caitlin Todd– healthy, vital– leaning back and filing her nails in a pose of indolence so apathetic to her surroundings it bordered on insubordination.

...well, maybe the gaping hole in the middle of her forehead had slowed her down a bit...

Uncharacteristically speechless, DiNozzo got up slowly to come around in front of her, lifting a shaky arm out straight, finger pointing to the red, round evidence still bright and obvious in the middle of her forehead. Finally, he sputtered, "Kate... what...? you're..." He gulped. "The...thing...between your eyes, there..."

She didn't break stride in her work but said calmly, "It's a bindi, Tony. You know, a _bindi_–from the Sanskrit." When he continued to gape silently, she just rolled her eyes and said, "Look, I don't mind you standing there just gaping, but do something about that dog...he's drooling on the carpet...or at least I _hope_ that's drool..."

He glanced down to see a huge, pony-of-a-dog leaning against him, looking up expectantly and wagging his tail very gently. He suddenly felt off balance and queasy with the memory that he'd been in this nightmare before... Tony drew a deep breath to fight the nausea and tried to keep up his end of the banter. "...a bindi..." He repeated, reaching out to grab the desk beside him, suddenly unable to stay on his feet without help. The monster at his side seemed to take note of it, and pressed a bit closer...

"Well, what do you want from me? It can't be Ash Wednesday every day. Besides," she let her hand lift to her forehead briefly in the first indication she'd given that a bullet to the forebrain was anything more than a passing inconvenience. "The ashes are messy, and...well, they don't really fool anyone..." She finally looked up from her nails and gazed at him, appraising. "Tony–you don't look too good–c'mon, sit down..." She got up from her desk to come alongside him, and with seeming practice, guided him back toward his desk, the drooling pony never leaving his other side. "Does Gibbs know you're here?"

Overwhelmed with the sudden weakness he felt, he tried dropping into the chair but felt one leg refuse to bend–almost like when he'd had that cast on the leg he'd broken, skiing. With a frown, he reached down to find a heavy, stiff brace keeping his leg stretched forward. "What...what is _this_?" he looked back up to Kate, in horror...

"Stop it, DiNozzo, you're scaring me," Kate frowned, kneeling in front of him and deftly working some joint at his knee–suddenly his knee bent to drop his leg to the floor, limply. "I thought you were going to stay home this week, you know–catch up bit on your rest."

But he wasn't listening, eyes unable to tear away from the round, red circle in the middle of her forehead. Nearly a perfect circle, too...and unable to stop himself, he found himself raising shaking finders to touch it, gingerly... and his hand flew back as if burned. "That's no bindi," he whispered. "Kate, you _died_. You're _dead._ I saw it. I saw you; I..." The memory of her blood and–he gulped–other fluids splashing him made his stomach flip yet again. _Insanity–that's it_, he decided, his eyes tightly shut. _I'm as insane as I was when I was locked up in that room...drinking that godawful rusty water; I still have the scars from that one, I know..._ He opened his eyes to peer down at his forearms, then started to raise his shirt and trace his fingers along his hip; the scars were there, they had to be; it was how he marked the time...

"Tony, do I _look_ dead?" Kate tried to reason with him. "C'mon, you saw the story, didn't you? Just grazed my temple, a bit of blood loss, a few days off..."

"Kate, your temple's _here_!" Tony yelled, touching the side of her skull then moving to poke at the offending fenestration. "...but the damn hole in your head is _here_..."

"Ow; careful..." She pulled back, irritated with his agitation, but then sat back on her heel, suddenly realizing, "Hey–your vision really cleared up, didn't it? You couldn't even _see_ the hole a few days ago...that's great, Tony."

She was smiling. Oh, Mother of Mercy, she was in front of him, smiling happily for him, a hole in her forehead, his stomach lurching for dear life–and his vision suddenly swam alarmingly, fuzzing the edges of everything in front of him. "Oh, _God_..."

"Damn it, DiNozzo, why are you here? I left you at home; you promised you'd get some rest..."

Tony managed to squint upward to see that the Icy Hues had returned, as if to haunt him again. Something was terribly wrong, wrong with his body and his vision and his mind; and what frightened him more was that he was certain this wasn't the first time. It was as if not only his personal time line in the universe was doubling back on itself, becoming scrambled, but that five or six parallel universes had suddenly been thrown into a bucket and mixed up all together...

"Gibbs..." he croaked. "You knew I was here. I just saw you upstairs, with Ducky, in his office..."

"Ah, you're confused again, lover..." And Tony knew he was completely over the edge when Gibbs did a very un-Gibbs-like thing: he knelt before him, smiling softly, and let his hand trace along Tony's thigh in affection and warmth... "We should get you home..."

"I'm not confused, damn it! It's the dreams! Or the–whatever they are." With the sudden surge of anger, Tony sat upright, willing strength back into his limbs. "This is crazy! I am _not_ your lover–my vision is 20/10, just as it's always been–Kate is _dead_–sorry, Kate," he added, with an honest glance of regret, to her, "and I am just fine." He stood suddenly, firmly, glaring down at Gibbs with his jaw jutted stubbornly and his vision as clear as ever. The pony and brace had mysteriously disappeared.

"Bravo, Anthony." Tony turned quickly to see Ducky's image swimming like the head of Oz on the large plasma screen across the room. "You're starting to fight back."

"From what–insanity?" Tony asked, suddenly uncertain before the doctor, needing answers to the madness.

"Good Lord, no!" Dr. Mallard snorted. "You're starting to see that we have a bit of control after all... at least we can mix our realities, engage in a cross-over of sorts: They may be manipulating science and psychology and all other aspects of the physical universe, but if They can do it, so can we."

Tony knew that he'd come to a Great Truth, a cosmic secret that might restore some balance to the universe. With a deep breath, he asked, "Who are '_They_,' Ducky, do you know?"

"Why, they're legions of hopeful writers with sublimated passions and thinly veiled fetishes..." Ducky mused. "They could be your neighbor, your doctor, your lover, your lawyer...they could be _you_..." Tony frowned at the words. "The details may appear as you live out each life given you, or they may not. You're not likely to ever know it all. But once you're used to the idea, it's not so bad–and with a little practice, you might come to enjoy it. Just think–" the doctor shrugged. "Where else can you get together with your cousin when you're both young and the subjects of so many stories?"

At his puzzled look, Ducky nodded past Tony, encouraging him to look behind him. As he turned, DiNozzo saw a bespectacled, spiky haired man about his age approach him in a wheelchair, green eyes dancing. Tony thought he looked familiar...until he realized with growing confusion that the man was his doppelganger. Stopping before him and rubbing his bristling chin, the visitor grinned up at him. "Well, come on, cuz, we don't have all day–and trust me, we _don't_ want to keep Max waiting."

Mouth dry, unable to process it all at once, DiNozzo simply nodded. "I'll get my coat."

Logan's smile widened happily, and he looked around as Tony leaned in to grab his jacket. "Lots of nice computer equipment in here," he murmured. "Think you could give us a tour, later on?"

Tony nodded again, still trying to rationalize all the fragmented parts of his life being thrown together in this crazy quilt. "Yeah. The parts that aren't classified."

"Yeah, right," his cousin laughed. "'Eyes Only' and that sort of thing. I'm familiar with the idea."

Gibbs watched silently as DiNozzo and his cousin moved off, toward the elevator.

"Jethro...?"

"Mmmm?"

"What are you thinking?" Ducky's voice fell over the otherwise silent bullpen.

"I'm just imaging bookends...an ice cream sandwich...doubling my pleasure..." Gibbs turned to grin up at the image on the plasma.

"Shouldn't be long now–I understand slash cross-overs are 'in' during summer hiatus." Ducky turned his back to the room. "Til then...I believe I'll go see what Abigail is up to..."


End file.
